Skating Polly

Skating Polly, the stepsister duo of Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse, often calls its music "ugly pop." It's a fitting description for songs that veer between sweet and catchy and full-throated screams with distorted, chug-a-lug guitar. The band's sound is deeply indebted to '90s grunge and alt-rock, but never comes across as pure imitation, perhaps because the duo viewed that era from the outside; when Skating Polly released its first album in 2011, both Mayo and Bighorse were still teens. Recently, Skating Polly teamed up with Veruca Salt's co-frontwomen Louise Post and Nina Gordon, who helped the band write an EP called New Trick.